Time Off

Mention that you’re going to the Balearic Islands and you might get a quizzical look, as the archipelago’s four largest islands are better known by their individual names. Most famous is Mallorca (or Majorca, if you choose the Spanish rather than the Catalan spelling). The others are Ibiza, Menorca and Formentera. They are all part of Spain and lie in the Mediterranean Sea, between the Spanish mainland and Africa.

There aren’t many small towns that exude the culture and elegance of an urbane city. Perhaps that’s why people flock to downtown Naples, on the Gulf Coast of southwest Florida. Fifth Avenue there is rightly famous for its bistros, high-end clothing and jewelry shops and casually upscale lifestyle. Yet the area’s appeal is also because of what lies immediately beyond and around it: a golf-rich region, with low-lying courses set against a backdrop of untouched native habitats and wetland preserves.

Dublin’s Chapter One, now in its 22nd year, offers an excellent example of modern Irish cookery. Chef and co-owner Ross Lewis and his staff will make you feel comfortable whether you’re a tourist, a local shop clerk or a certain internationally famous Irish rock star who’s known to frequent the place.

During the 1960s, when Sean Gallagher was 16, his mother took him fishing for steelhead on the Skagit River in northern Washington State, on the Canadian border. In the young Gallagher—now a retired teacher living in the shadow of Mount Rainier—the experience ignited a passionate pursuit of the giant sea-run rainbow trout.

After years of flying, it's easy to take air travel for granted and to see it simply as a way to move quickly from point A to point B. That's why you must watch this utterly charming film from Vodafone called An & Ria's First Flight. It's about a private jet journey by two women in their 70s, neither of whom has ever flown before.

A century ago, Nebraska’s greatest novelist, Willa Cather, gave voice to the raw nature and overwhelming scale of the state’s landscape. No one who has ever read her books, O Pioneer! (1913) or My Ántonia (1918), would mistake them for golf writing. But in drawing attention to the stark beauty and unremitting power of Nebraska’s vast open spaces, she identifies what makes a place like the Prairie Club so compelling.

Quote/Unquote

“Time is our most precious commodity, and there are conveniences that wealth brings to essentially get you more time.
—retired Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, explaining why he commutes via private jet from his Seattle home to watch games of the Los Angeles Clippers, the basketball team he bought last year for $2 billion.
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